People Are Promiscuous In Their News Sources

from the good-for-them dept

Tue, Sep 4th 2007 8:39am — Mike Masnick

One of the defenses that people often put up for newspapers' dislike towards Google News is that newspapers don't want "drop in" visitors. Instead, they want people who specifically read The Local Paper Times, or whatever, rather than randomdude23 who shows up from across the internet to read one story. So they want people who are going to go straight to their site, stick around and read many different pages. After all, this is exactly how newspapers used to work. Most people would subscribe to one, possibly two, local newspapers and then read a good portion of it (potentially, cover to cover). Unfortunately, however, that's not quite how people consume news these days. A new study shows that people are rather promiscuous in their news consumption. They constantly divide their attention among many different news brands. This shouldn't be surprising, considering how many news options people have these days, though it should also ease the worries of those that believe people get all their news from one source and therefore need to be "protected" from bias at that source. This "news promiscuity" is also a reason why news providers should go out of their way to cater to the needs of their readers, as it likely means that they're constantly reshuffling their "news portfolio." Therefore, doing things like making your content tougher to access -- as the NY Times just did with the Freakonomics RSS feed -- is only an invitation to lose readers to a more friendly source that knows it needs to keep its readers' attention.

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Filed Under: newspapers, sources

10 Comments

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matt (profile), 4 Sep 2007 @ 9:01am

yep
pretty accurate to me, sites like fark and google and digg, even msn and yahoo represent probably 50% of the internet users worldwide.

How these people even get paid for ads is beyond me, since almost nobody in their right mind even looks at ads as well even assuming that they aren't blocked....which makes me question why people even put up such ads.

Reminds me of an article someone did a while ago where they showed a snapshot of a news site with and without ads (I think it was cnn.com)...and it looked GREAT without ads, and with them it was just a horrible jumble of navigation.
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jb, 4 Sep 2007 @ 9:32am

Re: yep
I adblock everything except for the Red Stripe ads, just the thought of their commercials makes me laugh, as for the other ads, "They Are Very UUUUGLY!"
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Buzz, 4 Sep 2007 @ 9:34am

Ironic!
I just recently had a discussion with someone on this very topic. The other guy complained that Google sends such one-time-only visitors. I could not get him to explain how such visitors are damaging. It fascinates me how companies would rather attempt to change the world rather than adapt their own business model. >_
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Jack, 4 Sep 2007 @ 11:27am

Critical thinking
One of the most effective methods of critical thinking taught in elementary school is 'compare and contrast'. I'm sure individual newspapers would prefer that we subscribe to their publications and therefore their ideas, but in a world increasingly described in black and white, I would prefer to read a variety of viewpoints. Google News provides the best interface for choosing contrasting views that I have seen to date.
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David, 4 Sep 2007 @ 12:48pm

Protection from Bias
"...it should also ease the worries of those that believe people get all their news from one source and therefore need to be "protected" from bias".

Okay, but how many of those sources are owned by Rupert Murdoch?
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GoblinJuice, 4 Sep 2007 @ 1:24pm

So, how long until every news story is drenched with flash ads, popups and popunders? Oh, wait....

Gotta monetize the content, baby! =|
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GoblinJuice, 4 Sep 2007 @ 1:25pm

Re: Protection from Bias
o_O Dude. Seriously.
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anonymous coward, 4 Sep 2007 @ 1:29pm

the internet has ads?

brought to you by firefox, adblock+, and flashblock
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GoblinJuice, 4 Sep 2007 @ 10:18pm

Re:
Opera and an aggressive urlfilter.ini blocks most ads, too. =)
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MikeS, 5 Sep 2007 @ 8:06am

Re: Critical thinking
Thanks Jack, your comments helped me nail down a concept I was muddling through for a project.
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